


Balance: Prologue

by rinrinalin



Series: Balance [1]
Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25946003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinrinalin/pseuds/rinrinalin
Summary: Arashi are Gods fallen among humanity, and only together can they bring the universe back into balance.
Relationships: Aiba Masaki/Ohno Satoshi, Arashi Ensemble/Ohno Satoshi, Matsumoto Jun/Ohno Satoshi, Ninomiya Kazunari/Ohno Satoshi, Ohno Satoshi/Sakurai Sho
Series: Balance [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883128
Kudos: 3





	Balance: Prologue

#  Prologue

The world never felt quite right to Ohno Satoshi. He grew up in a small village on the Sea of Ioe. His father was a fisherman and his mother, blessings on her soul, worked at their market booth until the day his father failed to return from the open waters.

She was a devout woman, praying to Chaos on hands and knees for his return until her heart simply gave out.

Ohno hadn’t expected that of her. He hadn’t expected to be left alone quite so suddenly. 

He let the villagers of Tyna think what they wanted as he packed his meager belongings and sold the deed to their tiny cottage -- the only home he’d ever known. They thought it was sorrow that kept his gaze cast downward and his tongue wooden. Grief wasn’t what drove him from his home. 

It was the lack of it.

____

Ohno had no destination in mind. No plan. He set off in the earliest hours of the morning, fog hanging thick enough in the air to stick to his skin and leave dew drops to condense on his clothes. Buttercup, the single horse their family had owned, plodded along behind him as he led her to the edge of town. He paused to survey his options. North or East? 

He didn’t look back, not even once, to the village behind him. There was nothing to see. Only the white-gray of fog obscuring the varying shades of gray that comprised the market, temple, and shops along Tyna’s main road.

He kept his back to the blandness of it all. Tried not think about the nagging voice in the back of his brain that it was  _ wrong.  _ The priests of the temple had beaten that voice to silence years ago, when he was still just a boy. 

His mother’s death had strengthened it. 

The urge tingled at his spine to move forward. Keep moving. 

He took the road North. Away from the water.    
  
Ohno wouldn't miss the forbidding blue-gray of the ocean, but something in his chest mourned the loss of the waves.

____

Tyna was leagues away from the next small town, and weeks out from the nearest major city of Phallenda. Ohno camped in the forest along the road, hunting for game and trading in each small village he came to. At least, he attempted to. 

Most people weren’t keen on strangers who were just passing through. Not with the War only just ended and bands of troops from both sides roaming freely on their way ‘home’. Ohno didn’t much care if he was welcome or not. The times he wasn’t were just another night on the side of the road.

Having been ‘escorted’ by a band of youths to the edge of town on one such night, Ohno tried to care. Shouldn’t he have cared? He hadn’t had a bath or a warm bed in weeks. He was no threat to them.

Mechanically, he began to set up camp.

After grooming and hobbling Buttercup for the night, he set about building up a fire. Not because he was hungry. Or maybe he was?   
  
Shouldn’t he care?

Why was the wrongness following him? Chaos praise, shouldn’t it have stayed in Tyna where he left it?

The brightness of the flames left him night-blind and he didn’t see the stag until it was too late.

The animal, he was huge, the rack of his antlers twined in an intricate weave, the tips glowing white--

Glowing…?

\-- charged directly at him. 

Ohno scuttled backwards. He had weapons-- an axe, a club, bow and arrows-- nothing near. “Chaos--!” The animal bore its head down and the ground shook beneath it’s massive hooves. 

The beast gored him through the heart. 

There was an instant of pain.

Sweet, glorious agony that shattered his vision. It exploded in his chest, red-hot and burning. It poured through his veins, consuming his skin from the inside out. The air around him  _ pulsed _ and pressed inward on him. The whole weight of the universe tried to crush him.

He screamed. 

The sound that came forth was the cacophony of all the waves of all the oceans crashing at once.

The stag whipped his head, sending Ohno’s body crashing into the fire.

Ohno tried to lift himself away, but his limbs wouldn’t obey and the pain was--was--  _ ecstasy.  _ He collapsed back, consumed in  _ feeling  _ the life drain away from him.

The stag loomed over him with eyes far too human.  Ohno died with a whisper on his lips. “Aiba?”

  
  


____

  
When next Ohno is born, he  _ loves.  _


End file.
